The Trump administration’s proposed compact with colleges would violate academic freedom and freedom of expression in three broad areas.

(Originally published by Inside Higher Ed on October 23, 2025.)

Seven of the nine universities originally invited to sign the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” have rejected it, and now President Trump has extended the invitation to sign the compact beyond those nine institutions to all of higher education in exchange for preferential consideration for various federal benefits.

A college or university mulling over the invitation would do well to consider MIT president Sally Kornbluth’s reason for declining to sign it—that the compact “would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”

Let’s focus on matters of free expression and academic freedom by examining the compact in three broad categories: viewpoint diversity, institutional neutrality and student expression.

Continue reading the opinion here.